Knowing One's Place
Mere Comments

The Renaissance philosopher Giovanni Pico della Mirandola once famously wrote that man was unique in God's creation precisely because there was no gift that was peculiarly his, and thus no natural place for him to occupy. He could descend to the squalor of a beast, or he could ascend, by the power of contemplation, beyond even the angels. Man was radically detached from the rest of the created world, and in this detachment consisted his dignity.

Pico was part genius (mastering Chaldean and Persian and Arabic, not to mention other languages ancient and modern, sometime before his mid-twenties) and part happy enthusiast, and much needs to be forgiven him for his youth and winning naivete. It is said he was on the point of marrying a chambermaid or some other woman of low status until his friend and patron, Lorenzo de' Medici, put a stop to that. What he would have written had he lived into the prime of life is hard to say, but in his last year he did come under the spell of the fiery reforming Dominican, Savonarola -- who did not talk much about the endless capabilities of man.

Pico, in other words, had the excuse of youth. What's our excuse? It seems that our entire educational system is designed to scorn the idea of the ordinary -- the idea that, in fact, we are all meant to occupy a modest place, in a family, a community, or a church, a place that is seldom of our own making. But what is wrong with the ordinary? God likes ordinary people; that is why he created so many of us. What is duller than a panoply of primadonnas of the tenth magnitude? The insight of Christianity rather is that there is something wondrous about this rock, that tree, that carpenter over there turning a post on a lathe, or that mother rolling out the dough for something as wildly fantastic as gingerbread.

The rest-Excellent!